F English Department

Anne Bradstreet is right to find spring pleasant because of hash winter. Prosperity would not be so welcome if we did not sometimes taste of adversity. I am comfortably at home with the immediate application of the saying: ‘Sweet are The Uses of Adversity’ as ‘it is one of the paradoxes of nature that if one wishes to increase something one must expend’.

I wish I could be sanguine. But I invariably have an air of overpowering despondency in going through the evaluation of knowledge acquisition techniques and methods as I realize (and believe students do as well along the way) drudgery has no redeeming features and sweet would not be The Uses of Adversity. Understanding that why students bubbling up with joy soon fizzle out like a wet cracker then begins to dawn.  Students would soldier on, if deep down they know plodding through a mountain of material is worth the time. And ‘Our misfortunes are but the signposts pointing the way to the true road to success’

On the consensual view, it is fairly standard to have a phase of acquisition of knowledge through self study, followed by a phase of lecture Or to pursue self study in the light of lectures. There is a more or less stable consensus; however, for the structure of the acquisition of knowledge. Tutoring can genuinely nudge students closer to self-actualization if teachers act as facilitators, helping students prioritize material and filter our all that is unsuitable for exam- orientated preparation.

True, teachers cannot be nemesis; and the aim of theirs are always in tune with that of student: to help students move on to the next stage of learning; but teachers are to be facilitators, and there is limited self fulfillment on the part of students if teachers are limited to mantra: ‘here's more to life than books you know—but not much more’.

My daughter Rawaha was grappling with ‘CHAUCER’, the more she tried, less she came to grips with it, and emerged predictably from the labyrinth of material totally disorientated. I helped her to structure the method of acquisition of knowledge.

Students get the most frustrating feelings when they feel reading is getting nowhere. I hope that the pattern below will make you significantly less exasperated.

Prof Dr. Sohail Ansari

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

Q1) The outline& its elaboration

I.            What Father of Poetrymeans?

The father of poetry means that the person who generated the idea of Poetry very first time. 

II.            Why Chaucer is called the “Father of English Poetry”?

So, from 1066 until Chaucer's time only French is used for poetry. But, when Chaucer started to write so He wrote in English. "Canterbury Tales" of his is exclusively in English. Thus, Chaucer has been credited with the title "Father of EnglishPoetry."

III.            What qualities or characteristics are in Chaucer those make him Father of English Poet?

When it is said that Chaucer is Father of English Poetryand even Father of EnglishLiteratureso it refers toward the contribution of Chaucer in development of English poetry and literature.

Chaucerwas first realist, first humorist, first narrative artist, the first great character painter & first great metrical artist in English literature. Apart from this He is first person who wrote drama and novel in English first before novels and dramas were born.

IV.            Important work of Chaucer.

v The Book of the Duchess (also called THE DREAME OF CHAUCER)

v The House of Fame.

v Anelida and Arcite.

v Parlement of Foules.

v Troilus and Criseyde.

v The Legend of Good Women.

v English poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the unfinished work, The Canterbury Tales. It is considered one of the greatest poetic works in English.

v Chaucer also translated such important works as Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy and The Romance of the Rose by Guillaume de Lorris (extended by Jean de Meun)

V.            (Discuss) important element of his work.

Ø The most important element of Chaucer work is that his poetry is always closer to nature and realty.

·         Like theCanterburydepicts the reality ofironic and critical picture of English society that the people of that time particularly of the Church were more concerned with worldly things than spiritual.

·         In his “The Book of the Duchess” He discussed the nature. He discussed his dream the dream in which He  came closer to nature (flowers, animals, voice of hunting dogs &so on) in this poem that’s why this poem is also called “THE DREAME OF CHAUCER”

·         The House of Fame (Hous of Fame in the original spelling) is also in dream version discussed the nature, the nature of fame and the trustworthiness of recorded renown. Geoffrey focused on the role of the poet in reporting the lives of the famous.

Like in these 3 poetries Chaucer only discussed the nature & reality like this he always discussed the nature and reality in his every work and thusnature and realityare the most important element of his work.

The critics have found the seed of the novel in The Canterbury Tales which is famous for the ten syllable rhyming couplets, which makes him, as Ward points out, “the first painter of character” that is why “Chaucer is to be regarded as English first story-teller as well as first modern poet,” cries W.J. Long. The Canterbury Tales, an immense work of one hundred and twenty-eight tales, which covers the whole life of England, through 32 characters. The Canterbury Tales (c.1387-1400) is a cycle of linked tales told by a group of pilgrims who meet in a London tavern before their pilgrimage to the shrine of St Thomas a Becket in Canterbury.

 The most important thing that Chaucer did for English poetry was to bring a healthy realism to it. He brought poetry closer to nature, and or reality. He began as his contemporaries did, with dream visions and allegorical works. But gradually he reached the conclusion that nothing could be as nature herself. He comes to look upon the world of man. He set about reproducing it in his work. He became a painter of life in words. Chaucer’s broad and humane vision of life helped him in his portraiture of life. Sympathizing with the follies of men and women of average standards, he never riles and rants in his writings. He lets his character’s speak for themselves. He is the pioneer of that set of people who look upon the world with indulgent, tolerant and amused eyes.

VI.            The impact of time/age on works of Chaucer.

The fourteenth century brightly opened for industrial England but the glory was overtaken by plague, the Black Death (1348-49), as a result most of the laborers escaped death, left the country. The prestige of the Church was, in truth, beginning to decline, and, then came the birth of parliament. The literary moment of the age clearly reflected by five famous poets, in which, Langland, voicing the social discontent, preaching the equality of men and the dignity of labor; Wyclif, giving the Gospel to the people in their own tongue; Gower criticizing the vigorous life and plainly afraid of its consequences; Mandeville romancing about the wonders to be seen abroad; and Chaucer, sharing in all the stirring life of the times, and reflecting it in literature as no other but Shakespeare had ever done.

There is little to record about the prose which includes Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe. The greatest gift of the age was ‘’the heroic couplet Chaucer introduced into English verse, the rhyme royal he invented”, and its example is The Canterbury Tales which shows, Chaucer’s Age is still characteristically medieval, marked the persistence of chivalry.  In this Age, for the first time, the major poets wrote poetry in the native language, and make it a rival to the dominant French; as a result, literature came to be written which was read alike by all the classes of the literate.  Chaucer write:

Through me men gon into that blysful place
 Of hertes hele and dedly woundes cure;
 Through me men gon unto the welle of grace

“With Chaucer was born our real poetry” (Arnold) who has “a fondness for long speeches and pedantic digression…long explanation when none were necessary” (Albert). Chaucer was much occupied by divers official duties which all helped to increase his knowledge of humanity and of affairs, and gave him that intimate, sympathetic acquaintance with men and women which was the raw stuff of his final accomplishment.